Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
The World Health Organization on Monday blasted the growing gap between the number of coronavirus vaccines administered in rich and poor countries, branding the inequity a global ‘moral outrage’.
The WHO tore into wealthy nations now vaccinating younger people at low risk of developing COVID-19 disease, bluntly saying they were costing vulnerable people’s lives in low-income countries.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it was ‘shocking’ how little had been done to avert an entirely predictable catastrophic moral failure to ensure the equitable distribution of vaccines worldwide.
The gap was growing every single day, and becoming more grotesque every day, he told a press conference.
“Countries that are now vaccinating younger, healthy people at low risk of disease are doing so at the cost of the lives of health workers, older people and other at-risk groups in other countries,” Tedros said.
The inequitable distribution of vaccines is not just moral outrage. It’s also economically and epidemiologically self-defeating.
Some countries are racing to vaccinate their entire populations while other countries have nothing.
Tedros said rich countries were giving themselves a false sense of security.
The UN health agency chief said the more transmission of the virus, the more variants are likely to emerge and the more of those that spring up, the more likely they are to evade vaccines.
ARR
